Trudy Rubin: Murders put Tunisia on edge

When
leftist opposition leader Mohammed Brahmi was gunned down in front of his
family recently in Tunis, the impact rippled throughout the region. The
assassination shook the only democracy born of the Arab Spring upheavals that
is still fully functioning.

Given the
military crackdown in Egypt, the civil war in Syria, and the instability in
Libya and Yemen, the Tunis killing raised a question the 2011 revolts were
supposed to have buried: Is democracy suited to the Arab world?

Tunisia
was supposed to be the poster child for Arab democracy, the country where the
self-immolation of a frustrated youth sparked the first (peaceful) Arab Spring
revolution. With its strong European links, Tunisia was thought to be the place
where a moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, could coexist with seculars.

After
Ennahda won a plurality of votes, its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, agreed to keep
Islamic references out of a new constitution and pledged to respect the rights
of women. But Brahmi’s death, after the unsolved February murder of another
secular opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, has stunned Tunisia.

“The
country is in shock,” said Jerry Sorkin, a Philadelphia entrepreneur with
long-standing ties in Tunisian business and political circles. “This is not a
country like Iraq or Syria, where you have these types of killings.”

At a time
when the Egyptian military has just ousted a president from the Muslim
Brotherhood, and killed scores of his followers, the Tunisian murders raise
more questions about the coexistence of secular and Islamist parties.

Both
murdered men were strong critics of Ennahda, which also has Muslim Brotherhood
roots. Ghannouchi has denounced the killings; the interior minister says they
were committed by the same Islamic extremist. But many Tunisians wonder whether
they could have been carried out by a radical faction within Ennahda. If not,
why hasn’t the government tracked down Belaid’s killer?

Dissatisfaction
with Ennahda has been rising over a lagging economy and delays in writing a
constitution.

Sorkin,
who just returned from Tunisia and travels widely there, says he heard many
complaints about the government’s closing restaurants and coffee shops in the
daytime during Ramadan. This imposition of religious norms, he says, has
angered not only seculars but also devout Muslims.

Tunisian
feminists, who are surprisingly strong for a Muslim country, are also furious
at the jailing of Amina Sboui, a young woman who bared her breasts on Facebook
as a protest against hard-line Islamism. She sits in prison while political
assassins roam free.

The stock
of a secularist party called Nidaa Tounes has been rising, and its advocates
have been reaching out to rural voters. A recent Pew poll showed that 78
percent of Tunisians are dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

Although
a majority of Tunisians are observant, Ennahda may be losing voters. The big
question is whether the party would accept electoral defeat. The Brahmi
killing, however, raises the more immediate question of whether Ghannouchi can
control his followers, or the radical Salafi fringe groups who have attacked a
TV station, a cinema, bars, and the U.S. Embassy.

An
Egyptian-style coup against Ennahda is unlikely, since Tunisia’s army is weak,
and the situation hasn’t yet reached the fever pitch of secular-religious
antagonism in Egypt. But tensions are rising.

The
failures of the other revolutions are more painful. The primary test case for
Islamist-secular coexistence was the Arab world’s most populous country, Egypt.
That experiment just ended ignominiously, when the military carried out a coup
against the elected president, Mohammed Morsi.

Now,
instead of fighting it out at the polls, both sides are taking to the streets.
Morsi’s chief error was his failure to pursue consensus politics.

Still,
Morsi’s opponents — including the youthful leaders who rallied millions of
protesters in 2011 and again last month — have hardly been more democratic.
They failed to organize political parties and reach out to rural voters. They
also failed to unify behind a single leader.

The most
hopeful prospect for a successful Arab democracy remains Tunisia, where
seculars and Islamists still talk to each other. A hopeful sign would be the
swift, credible arrest of the killers of Brahmi and Belaid.

TRUDY RUBIN is a columnist and board member
for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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